Community Organizations Making a Difference

By: AIF Staff

First elected to Congress in 1998, former Speaker of the House and American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan represented portions of Milwaukee County for two decades. Throughout his time in government – and after, Ryan has advocated for policies and programs that would expand economic opportunities for all Wisconsinites.

In recent years, Ryan’s American Idea Foundation has supported local efforts like The Joseph Project, which aims to pair willing workers with upwardly-mobile vocations, and the Wisconsin Inmate Education Association, which works to reduce recidivism. It has done so because the Foundation believes in their evidence-based approaches to break the cycle of poverty and improve our communities. It is also why in 2024, the American Idea Foundation is thrilled to partner with another promising model that was founded in the Badger State: Future Forward.

Future Forward, one of the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 annual grant recipients, is an early-childhood literacy and reading intervention program founded in Milwaukee in 2005 through a partnership between Milwaukee Public Schools, Marquette University, and partners around the City of Milwaukee.

Future Forward understands reading is essential to a child’s learning, their long-term educational attainment, and their overall wellness. Future Forward also recognizes the most crucial time to teach literacy skills is early in a child’s academic journey, which is why they focus on specialized literacy education programming for kids between kindergarten and 3^rd grade.

A report from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM) details the specifics of Future Forward’s approach but fundamentally, Future Forward employes a school, community, family partnership approach to promote student literacy development. At each Future Forward school, the program has a site manager, a family engagement coordinator, and individual tutors.

The site manager is typically a certified teacher who manages personalized one-on-one tutoring provided by professionals and volunteers. The site manager collaborates with the school to develop a tutoring schedule for individual students and identifies ideal tutors for these children.

Future Forward then pairs a student with an individualized instructor and develops a customized literacy and education plan so they can read at grade level. Future Forward tutors provide one-on-one instruction through a 90-minute weekly session during a student’s regular school day. Areas of focus during tutoring sessions can include a focus on letter sounds, phonological awareness, shared readings, tutor read aloud, leveled/instructional readings, and writing activities.

This instruction is then paired with professional Family Coordinators who engage families and caregivers so they can support their children during non-school hours. The Family Coordinators assist with outreach and communication to help promote literacy development outside of school.

Future Forward becomes a part of their students’ lives by being embedded in the school learning community. In most instances, Future Forward has a dedicated learning space for tutors to work one-on-one with their students. It provides an exciting environment for a student to learn and to develop a strong relationship with their individual tutor. Future Forward tutor’s engagement with students focuses on the child’s skills, mastery, ability, and progress without highlighting deficits. They pair this with support structures outside of school hours with the goal of gradually raising children’s reading levels.

There is a reason for Future Forward’s particular emphasis on 3rd grade: Only 32% of fourth graders in America  are proficient and reading at grade-level, with rates being even lower for students of color and students from economically-disadvantaged areas. 3^rd grade also represents a key inflection point in a student’s educational development.

 An American Educational Research Association study found that a student who can’t read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate than a child who does read proficiently by that time. If this student’s household is impoverished, they are 13 times less likely to graduate on time than his or her proficient, wealthier peer.

The need for Future Forward was clear before COVID-19 and with school districts still working to bridge the “learning loss” gap, it has arguably become more important than ever. The data shows that a sizable number of American students, particularly those of color and those in public schools, would benefit from a cost-effective, evidence-based early-childhood literacy program and Future Forward has shown tremendous promise in delivering for these cohorts.

The model employed by Future Forward has been rigorously studied and since 2013,  there has been a growing body of evidence showing positive outcomes for students following their engagement with Future Forward. Future Forward’s approach has been recognized by the Department of Education’s “What Works Clearinghouse” and researchers have found meaningful improvements in reading outcomes over the short-term and long-term.

Among the more notable findings, a 2022 randomized-controlled trial by the Socially Responsible Evaluation in Education found that:

• Future Forward had a positive impact on underserved students facing more challenges learning to read.

• Future Forward had roughly three times the impact on Black students and five times the impact on Black male students than the overall impact.

A long-term RCT from 2023 found improved test scores by Future Forward program participants in years 3-7 after the beginning of the study. It also found a reduction in special-education placements at the 7-year follow-up period.

A student’s ability to read at grade-level has profound effects on their present and their future. It has ripple effects in their schools, their homes, and their communities and given the importance of educating the next generation of America’s leaders, our youth will undoubtedly benefit from cost-effective, evidence-based programs like Future Forward.

Future Forward has made an impact in Southern Wisconsin and as the program scales and accumulates additional evidence, the American Idea Foundation will stand in solidarity with their efforts to bridge the literacy gap and help students read at grade level.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here. 

By: AIF Staff

One of the organizations receiving support from the American Idea Foundation in 2024 is I.C.Stars, formally known as the Inner-City Computer Stars Foundation. The American Idea Foundation is partnering with them because of their commitment to evidence-based approaches and because of their effectiveness in training and launching technology careers for over 700 young adults from underserved communities.

Founded in 1999 in Chicago, IL, I.C.Stars is a national technology workforce training and placement program that prepares young adults for technology careers and community leadership.

They work with young adults from low-income backgrounds and provide a technology-based curriculum which gives participants the education, training, tools, and experience to obtain a job in the information technology sector.

Detailing the approach taken by I.C.Stars, Stand Together described how they select students for their program:

            “Rico is a proud alumni and now the full-time recruitment manager for I.C.Stars, a technology-based workforce development and leadership training program for low-income adults. Rico is the talent guy.

            Three times a year he pours over 400-500 applications and funnels them through a rigorous selection process that includes a hot-seat panel interview. There are a few standard prerequisites—a minimum age (18), a high school diploma or GED, and six months of cumulative work experience.

            Beyond that, Rico is looking for resilience and career aspirations. Proof that a candidate has weathered adversity and desires to build a salaried career in technology, and not just an hourly   paycheck. The process ends with a class of 20 interns who will embark on a 16-week experience (called a “cycle”) that will turn their lives right side up.”

True to their motto: “Learn to Code. Launch a Career,” I.C.Stars enrolls students in a free, two-year program which begins with an intensive, 16-week paid internship program. Through the program, students learn how to build web-based applications and become experts on in-demand coding skills—Javascript, Python, and others— while also focusing on client project work, leadership development, career readiness and network building.

Following the internship, students receive a two-year residency position with local employers. As they proceed through the program, I.C.Stars students are also provided with a mentor in the IT field and ongoing professional development opportunities.

The results are impressive: I.C.Stars places approximately 90% of its qualified graduates in jobs and these participants see their annual earnings increase by an average of 300% as a result of the program. This video, featuring testimonials from three I.C.Stars graduates highlights the impact this program has on the lives of students.

While helping underserved youth learn valuable skills upon which life-long careers can be built is a noble goal in and of itself, I.C.Stars believes they must do more to create lasting improvements in communities around America.

It is why a core part of their mission is creating a community of change agents by encouraging their alumni to adopt a pay-it-forward mentality. Over 80% of I.C.Stars graduates continue to engage with the program and volunteer with the program.

As Stand Together noted when profiling Tierra Phillips, an I.C.Stars graduate in Chicago:  

            “The I.C.Stars end game isn’t just to churn out expert coders, it’s to build community leaders. Civic leaders, business leaders, and service leaders who go back home and create change. In a very real sense, I.C.Stars is a leadership college disguised as a tech bootcamp. And its alumni are poking holes in glass ceilings, bringing new hope to their neighborhoods, and slowly but surely reversing that cycle of opportunity.

            Tierra Phillips says that before coming to I.C.Stars her goal was to make it out of her        neighborhood, describing it as a “terrible” place to live. But the program’s emphasis on community impact has changed her perspective.

            “I can take the skills that I’ve learned here and take that back to my community,” she says, smiling as she talks about the I.C.Stars civics class. “They’re actually teaching us how to reach out to our alderman. I never knew who my alderman was. So now I actually know how to take the steps to being a civic leader. Going into my neighborhood and making changes.”

Because of their success over the last 25 years, I.C.Stars has expanded with chapters in Kansas City, Missouri and Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Mackenzie Scott recently made a $5 million contribution to buttress the organization’s efforts.

To help quantify the effect of the program, I.C.Stars has partnered with Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities to measure the program’s impact on earnings and future employment opportunities. This study began before COVID-19 and is still ongoing, as I.C.Stars was able to convert their programming to virtual engagements during the pandemic and the funds provided by the American Idea Foundation will be used to help complete this study.   

In explaining I.C.Stars impact on her life, Milwaukee program participant Luz Mercado told TMJ4: “It’s going to shape the future of technology one step at a time, that everything that they do, causes an impact and literally changes the life of the person that goes through the program.”

Transforming young lives in an evidence-based way and creating communities for positive change are exactly why the American Idea Foundation is so excited to work with I.C.Stars in the year ahead.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here.